


Tourniquet

by blueprintofyourpast



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Mild Sexual Content, Other Characters - Freeform, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-01-07 19:05:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12238884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueprintofyourpast/pseuds/blueprintofyourpast
Summary: Rick found her. He fished her out of the woods and brought her to this strange place where walls of steel stand tall and immovable between her and the evergreen madness that wouldn’t stop pestering her for weeks.OR: Life in Alexandria forces Michonne to deal with the aftereffects of her long journey through the woods. Fortunately, she doesn’t have to do it  alone. (Guess what? I still suck at writing summaries.)





	1. The House

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!
> 
> This is story is a sequel to 'Tremor', my first (angsty) contribution to the TWD fandom. I don't think it's necessary for you to read it before you start reading _this_ fic, but skimming through it probably won't do any harm. I'll leave it up to you guys.
> 
> Happy reading and thanks for stopping by!
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> Disclaimer: Ha. I wish.
> 
> Written to _The Lake_ by Aqualung.

Her dreams are so fucking _loud_. They come with a deafening force. They’re screeching, squealing and shrieking, they cut through her eardrums with saw-toothed sabres, and they leave her feeling nauseated, they leave her feeling like shit every time she rolls to her side and finds him barely an inch away from her, chasing after her in his doze and frowning as his blind fingers slide aimlessly over the bedsheets.

At night, Rick turns into a needy octopus. At night, he holds her close and clings to her with a stubborn tenderness that never ceases to amuse her because he’s the leader, the strict, unapologetic force that keeps this place going and hails down on all those, who dare to pose a threat to his newfound home. He’s a fighter, forged and weathered by unbearable grief and the constant struggle for survival, and he can be merciless, he can be downright _barbaric_ at times.

He’s a killer, yes, but he’s also a provider – _a father_. He snuffed a man with his bare teeth, ripped out his carotid like a mad dog and left him drowning in a dark red pool of his own blood before he stabbed another one to death to save his son from a horrible fate. He’s fiercely protective of the people he loves and cares about and he’s always so eager to feel responsible when things don’t go as planned, always so eager to burden himself with the weight of the world despite knowing that no one ever has asked him to do so.

She props herself on her elbow and studies the parts of him that aren’t concealed by his pillow or the covers: the deep, unruly sea of grizzled curls that borders the tanned shores of his strong neck, the veils that cloak baptismal caves of endless teal and arctic blue, and the hardened realms of his lean torso, rising and falling with every breath he takes. Even in the sparse light of the early morning sun she can track down all the lines and notches that have been carved into his skin. Pain is a cruel artist, but it didn’t get the best of him, it didn’t soil the smooth space between his brows she’s compelled to kiss goodnight when sleep truckles through the open window to hold them hostage.

_Sleep._

Even after a good day, it pulls the rug out from under her feet. Even after a good day, it feeds her with doubt, languor and an irrational petulance she can’t even begin to explain. Even after a good day, it tends to loosen Rick’s grip on her and drives her out of his arms.

Careful not to wake him, she slips out of the bed, puts on her pyjama pants and drapes one of his well-worn button-downs over her shoulders. His room is a cluttered hollow, dark and warm and carpeted with a plethora of discarded shirts and socks. She shakes her head and almost smiles to herself on her way out. He’s a slob – just like Carl, who’s still convinced that _being a teenager_ counts as an acceptable excuse for being spine-crawlingly messy.

The staircase is a minefield, so she makes sure to avoid all the creaky steps – the third, the fourth, the sixth, and the ninth – and then she moves through the hallway on quick feed, fastening up her shirt and giving a small jump when a loud, guttural, _wall-shattering_ snort erupts from behind Daryl’s door. _Well._ Good to know that he made it back from his three-day recruiting tour in one piece.

Once in the kitchen, she reaches for the far-left cabinet and pulls out a flat, rectangular tea box. It’s one of the tackiest things she has ever seen: made from cheap tin, dipped in powder blue and spotted with tiny specks of tarnished gold, its cover presenting a young woman riding a swing and losing one of her shoes in the process. She’s frozen in time, surrounded by roses and thimbleweed and shrouds of malachite shrubbery. The skirt of her taffy pink dress bounces and billows like the flower head of a peony in a light breeze, and she doesn’t take notice of her servant steering the swing with a set of ropes – or the young gentleman, who’s sitting right in front of her, flinching away and reaching out for her at the same time.

She settles for a bag of chamomile tea, plants her hands on the counter and waits for the water to boil. Out there on the other side of the window, Alexandria is still lost in a cosy slumber, a light drizzle obscuring the neighbouring houses, and thick wafts of mist funnelling through the streets like ghost white streams of cotton wool.

After sunrise, the place is thriving. It’s buzzing with energy, allegiance, and a sense of belonging that – according to Rick and the rest of the group – had to be paid with the blood of bullies and innocents. Apparently, some people _had_ to die while others lost their lives due to the ruthless law of collateral damage.

She was there, at the churchyard. She stood in the middle of a circle of naked potbellies made from soft earth, and she followed endless rows of wooden grave crosses penetrating the sky like scuffed pillars: crooked, lonely, and poorly tacked together. She can’t remember the epitaphs, the names of former residents who used to call this community their home, but she can feel them, she can _hear_ them loud and clear.

She can hear past lives – _happy lives_ spent in blitheful self-deceit – that float through the air, and echoes of faint laughter and hushed love confessions that sink down to the pit of her stomach. She can hear foreign memories as they croon in the dark corners of this house. They’re with her. They’re trapped within the walls, thumping against harled stone, and stretching the wooden beams above her head until they grunt and grate and squeak.

Why is she here?  
How did she even _get_ here?

Memories of what happened at the clearing start to sneak up on her and she flexes the muscles in her jaw. There are raindrops drumming against her forehead and there’s a familiar stranger staring at her with bright, tearful eyes. A breathless chuckle reverberates in her ears and she remembers calloused fingers getting caught in her mop of drenched braids.

Rick found her. He fished her out of the woods and brought her to this strange place where walls of steel stand tall and immovable between her and the evergreen madness that wouldn’t stop pestering her for weeks. And she can still hear it: the animalistic choir of the dead, the never-ending rustle of leaves scraping over dry ground, and that harsh, heart-breaking order cooed and whispered ever so softly.

As the high-pitched whistle rings out, the waters of the past are forced to drain away quickly. She blinks, shakes herself out of it, and prepares her cup of tea, a feeble thrum of disorientation bleeding through her pores, and an eerie vibe of solitude sticking to the back of her neck like the brittle caress of a faceless lover.

“Hey.”

His voice sounds like sandpaper: grained and heavy as it slogs along miles of indomitable land. It became her shelter when her body couldn’t deal with regular meals in the beginning, when she would grip the toilet seat like a lifeline whilst coughing up thick threads of spit and curdled spew. She would barge from one torturous loop of helpless convulsion to the next, and – out of pity, instinct or affection – Rick would crouch down beside her and hold back her hair, he would press his forehead against her shoulder blade with a sigh and macerate her pain with palliative words of consolation.

Afterwards, they would find refuge in one of their beds and he would pull her in. He would slip his hand under her top to let his palm rest against her belly, urging her to start their nightly ritual of asking each other questions about their former lives: what they liked to do on Sunday mornings, which generic pop songs they secretly listened to on repeat for hours, and who they thought would have won the next presidential election if the world hadn’t ended.

“Michonne?”

She turns around to take him in. Him and his wild hair, his bloodshot eyes, his rumpled clothes, and his stalwart boots. Commiseration tears at her brows. Despite getting a good amount of five to six hours of sleep each night, he always looks tired these days.

“Everything alright?”

“I’m here”, she mutters.

It’s a strange altercation of saying _Hello_ or _Good morning_ or _Sorry that I unintentionally wriggled out of your embrace again_ , but it’s what they agreed on when she slipped away for the first time and saw nothing but muddy spills, dying trees, and grey bodies lurching, stumbling and staggering around her, swaying from left to right and bumping against one another like some untrained members of a poorly choreographed marching band.

The sensation of his index and middle finger pressing into the crook of her arm shakes her out of it _again_ and she goes stiff under his touch, both angered and appalled by her inability to stay in the present – and of course he misreads her reaction as a sign of spurning dismissal. He shrinks back and raises his hands in gentle placation as if he’s trying to comfort a wounded animal, as if he’s trying to reassure her that he’s not the enemy.

She takes a sip of her drink before she sets the mug on the counter. She holds her hand out towards him, waiting for him to get the message, and fortunately, he does: after a long, frightful moment of badly cached disappointment and uneasy confusion rushing across his rugged features, he gifts her with a soft smile and closes the space between them.

His body has become her shelter, too. It’s stable and solid against her, it keeps her from running away too far without forcing her into a corner. His hands settle at her waist and she hums lightly as his chest expands against her forehead. _This_ is still new to her. It feels strange and familiar at the exact same time, and for some reason, it doesn’t really scare her.

At some point – probably after Beth’s funeral – they were delusional in their collective urge to find a place to live, they were chocked off by silent shock and dehydration, and they would carve out a miserable existence in the grim and unforgiving dells of the wilderness, but she didn’t need him to hold her then, even if a small part of her _wanted_ him to.

Another part of her – a much bigger one – wanted to hold him as well because the sheer sight of him – rough, exhausted, and dysfunctionally leery – would wear down her will to keep going. He was bursting at the seams and she couldn’t bear to look at him sometimes, so it never happened. They never held each other. Not until about a month ago, when he found her kneeling in a puddle of shredded guts and chopped off limbs.

“You need anything?”

His lips move against her auricle and she leans back to meet his questioning gaze.

“I’m good.”

“You sure about that?” he asks with a tilt of his head.

_Damn him._ She slips her hands under his elbows and a sudden pang of jealousy starts to stab and saw at her breastbone. He’s scheduled for a supply run today. He’s going with Glenn and Tara and he didn’t ask her to join them. He didn’t ask her to do _anything_ so far.

“I need toothpaste”, she says because it’s the first thing that crosses her mind.

“Spearmint and baking soda”, a conspirative smirk follows the grey-streaked trails of his slightly overgrown scruff; it tugs at his lips, glides along his cheeks, and dissolves into tiny crinkles around the corners of his eyes, and she breathes out a sigh.

“You know it.”

His grin broadens. For the split of a second, he doesn’t look tired at all. He looks genuinely happy, like the prospect of doing something for her is enough to lift his spirits. And she’s happy _for_ him, but she also wants to fucking _scream_ at him, she wants to wrap herself around him, and she wants to tell him to stop caring so much because his constant need to be there for others almost destroyed him in the past.

Nonetheless, she’s willing to emulate his serene expression when his smile begins to falter and makes room for deep lines of worry – the exact same lines that clouded his face when he told her that he’s not ready to let her go beyond the walls, and she can tolerate his fears for now, she can tolerate the fears that beat through her own veins, too. They both know that they’ll have to talk about it again eventually, though. And it won’t be easy.

“You volunteered to take watch tonight?”

“I did”, she says and she squeezes his arms to alleviate the growing apprehension that crystallises his posture, “Abraham’s joining me. He found another box of Griffin’s in the pantry, so I’m gonna smell like cheap cigars tomorrow. Consider yourself warned.”

He bites the corner of his mouth and looks out of the window, his brows narrowing at the sight of what could be the fog, the dewy grass, the beige, crumbling plaster that enrobes the walls of Morgan’s house, or the fact that she didn’t ask for his opinion when she decided to start pulling her weight within the community.

“My shift starts at sundown. You said you probably won’t be back before midnight, so I asked Gabriel to look after the kids.”

“He’s a good man”, he says, “We can trust him now.”

“Yeah.”

His gaze falls back to her face and he rubs the crumpled material of her shirt with the pads of his thumbs before he lifts his hand and twirls one of her braids between his fingers. It’s not much, but it’s _so much more_ than a quick round of questions and a goodnight kiss.

“You okay?”

“Not yet”, he replies with a helpless shrug, “But I’m getting there.”

“Me, too.”

She thinks back to her first night in this house, this picture-perfect mausoleum. She thinks about the way his eyes would follow her during dinner, the way her heartrate would speed up when he told her that this place could be a home for them, and the way his voice would break around a handful of words that oozed with trust and shattered her to the core.

“See you at the gates tonight?”

She gives a nod and a smile, and he leans in to kiss her cheek. Huffing out a disbelieving laugh, she catches his face with her right hand and tugs at his beard. He’s an _idiot_ , but at least he meets her halfway. He pulls her closer and lets go of her hair to press his fingers against the patch of skin that extends over the side of her windpipe. He does that from time to time: checking her pulse whilst kissing her, making sure that she’s still alive even though she’s standing right in front of him. She doesn’t like it, but maybe he can’t help himself because he didn’t think he would ever see her again, because he already for mourned her.

They both used to see things, they both used to hear things, they both used to suck at distinguishing between reality and the dark illusions their minds would rack them with, but it all fades away when he pries her lips apart and curls his tongue against hers, galvanizing her to grasp at the collar of his shirt and push up against him when a searing wave of fervency ripples through her body and singes the fluttering clod that’s nestled between her lungs.

Coming up for air, they drift apart and bend their heads towards each other. His lashes brush against her upper eyelids and they’re toe to toe, they’re chest to chest. He covers her ears with his hands, muffles the incessant noise of weeks spent in isolation, and lightly nudges her nose with his.

“Thank you”, he mumbles into her skin.

Her answer is a soft peck to his top lip and she watches as he turns away and leaves before the gentle hum of anxiety reclaims her senses. With arabesques of celadon boughs blurring her view, she leans back and grips the edge of the counter until it feels like her knuckles are about to break the membranoid shell that was made to keep them safe.


	2. The Gift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew.
> 
> Sorry for the slight delay. I was busy as hell. Either way, here’s the new update. Oh, and thank you for supporting this fic <3
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> Disclaimer: Meh.
> 
> Written to _Freedom_ by Curtis Harding (I suggest you check him out. He's criminally underrated.)

It’s been 18 days and she’s on her way to Gainesville. The bleeding sunset bids her to seek refuge in an abandoned golf club building and she leaves her guard dogs at the main gate. They look after her with greedy eyes, their stunted arms reaching out for her as if to catch her in a loving embrace, their lamentations repetitive and full of desperate gluttony as strands of thickened blood slosh and sputter out of their torn-up throats.

The absence of man has turned the golf course into a field of tares. Wildflowers, reeds and all kinds of grasses: it’s all free to spread out and roam through areas that used to be neatly trimmed and meticulously curbed in former times. And even inside the house nature seems to be exceedingly zealous to reconquer all the nooks and crannies that were designed for inspired discussions about regional politics and neighbourhood legends.

For some reason, she’s convinced that Hershel would’ve spent his weekends at a place like this. Maybe Bob and Tyreese, too. They would’ve played for a while and then they would’ve returned to the terrace where their wives or girlfriends would’ve greeted them with radiant smiles and sweating bottles of local craft beer. They would’ve cracked jokes about their terrible backswings and the sun would’ve joined them in their laughter, bright and blinding with unscathed merriment.

Mike would’ve hated it because back then, he would’ve rather died than left the city to take a peek at what he used to call _the life of bumfuck nowhere’s middle brow_. He was a man that attended business meetings and talked about numbers and stock quotations, and every Friday night he took her to their favourite Vietnamese restaurant while André drove the nanny to distraction by moving his toys around the living room. The colour books, the action figures, and Bo, the long-limbed plush monkey with the yellow scarf and the friendly face, who had been a birthday present from his godfather Terry. For a while, André wouldn’t go anywhere if Bo wasn’t allowed to tag along – _especially_ when it was time for another visit at the paediatrician’s office.

A bulky lump of wistfulness quivers at the back of her throat and she tries to swallow against it as it grows and grows and grows. Hershel and Bob and Tyreese, Terry and Mike and André. They’re all dead, they’re all gone – just the same as Andrea, just the same as Beth and Karen and Patrick and Zach, just the same as everybody else.

She walks through the dining hall and sets her bag on one of the dusty buffet tables before she moves on to the patio door and wipes at the smudgy vision panel with the sleeve of her shirt. Set on the bank of a blot-shaped lake, this place must’ve been beautiful. It must’ve been the perfect venue for wedding ceremonies and family gatherings, but now the lake has dwindled into an oily pit of putridity and it’s tinged with slate grey, it’s sheeted with coppery heaps of rotten leaves, orphaned sprigs, and dead carps.

There was a moment back on the road when they were blessed with a downpour that left them giggling with gratitude. It’s one of the memories she’s most fond, it’s how she wants to remember them all: full of relief, full of childlike joy and full of foolish frivolity as they rolled around in a bed of wet gravel, threw back their heads, and danced in the rain.

Carol would reach for her hand and they would open their mouths to catch a few drops with the tips of their tongues. She would take a deep breath and savour the feeling of water seeping through her clothes and cooling her overheated skin, and she would look around to find Carl and Judith getting drenched and laughing at the weeping clouds. She would look at Glenn and Maggie, at Daryl and Sasha, at Noah and Gabriel, at Tara and Rosita and Eugene and Abraham.

She would look at Rick and he would stare right back at her, his Adam’s apple bobbing before the hard lines of his face would give way to a crooked smile that would cause her to mirror his expression, glad and more than relieved that he didn’t skip this short interval of time that allowed them all to stop and recharge, to recollect themselves before they would have to start moving again.

In a final attempt to tease her, the sunset taps against the room-high paladin windows. The smell of mould is ever-present, the stagnant air all the more oppressive. She closes her eyes to stray through the dark, labyrinthine corridors of her mind palace until she arrives at the dimmed, cylindrical inner courtyard. The walls are cracked, they’re cicatrised, and she takes a look at the petroglyphs, at the rough contours that seam up the bitter legend of her unintended pilgrimage. She takes a look at the two warriors as they stand back to back against a shoal of ghoulish creatures that soon succeeds in separating them, forcing one of them to fall short and the other one to get lost behind the enemy lines.

As the sun loosens its grip on her eyelids, she pictures one of the houses she saw on Aaron’s photographs: caught somewhere between Victorian and Modern Colonial architecture, surrounded by broad patches of shamrock green sward, and dressed in a coat of cream-coloured wood panelling, its collar crested with auburn roof tiles and fuzzy moss.

She pictures her family, happy and healthy and free from the bloody stains that used to defile them. She pictures Carl, Noah, Tara and Glenn – shrieking, guffawing, and completely soaked as they chase each other through the front yard. Carol, Daryl and a very pregnant Maggie cheer from the porch steps when Glenn almost slips on the wet lawn before he reaches back and throws his next water bomb at Carl. Up on the porch and apparently unimpressed by the ongoing war that’s playing out before them, Abraham and Eugene clack their tumblers of whiskey while Sasha and Rosita share an apple with their legs dangling off the railing. They both snicker at the sight of Gabriel, who glances around suspiciously whenever another apple seed bounces off the back of his head.

She doesn’t know if her plan actually worked and maybe she’ll never know. Maybe she’ll never see them again and the sheer thought of it reaches deep down to cradle her lungs and to cord them with miles of filament until her whole body shakes and heaves with unrelenting panic and pure, causalgic agony.

They’re not real. _None_ of this is real. Not even Rick, who’s trapped in his own world on the other side of the porch. Not even Rick, whose face gleams with pride when he holds Judith high above his head, propelling her to kick at the air with squeals of excitement. Not even Rick, who breaks into a ripple of soft laughter when he lowers his daughter back to his chest, engages her in ridiculous baby talk, and buries his right hand in the thickening fluff of her brassy hair that glows and shimmers, more powerful and consoling as the sun itself.

Not even Rick, who turns towards her, his eyes as blue as the base of a flame. They burn with happiness and they’re so _bright_. They guide her home and pierce right through her, and they wrap her up in folds of Aegean drapery to keep her from bleeding out. They assuage her sorrows – her loneliness – and she almost believes him, she almost believes him when he holds her gaze whilst whispering into Judith’s ear.

_Look at your mama._

She reels back as if he shot her right in her chest. And it’s not about his _words_. His words feel right – they _do_. It’s about his tone, his timbre and the sudden lack of his trademark twang. It’s about the fact that he sounds like Mike did when they started seeing each other: smooth, a bit too self-assured, and slightly drowned by the hoarse crackle of her old phone line.

Every night he would leave her a voicemail message. Every night he would ask her about her day and then tell her about his. Every night he would rhapsodize about their last date – her beauty, her intelligence – about how she didn’t even know what she was doing to him, about what he wanted to do to _her_ if she would let him have his way, and every night she would listen to his excessive sweet talk with a roll of her eyes, but in the end, she would fall for him – hard. Hard enough to create something with him. Something pure, something sacred, something she would shower with implicit adoration and unconditional love, something she should’ve died for when she had the fucking chance.

Her vision turns blurry, but it seems like Rick isn’t done yet. He smiles at her and then he parts his lips to finish her off. And he delivers it to her, his final coupe de grace, and it’s escorted by the crackle and her own hyperventilation.

_Look at her gown._

Exhaling harshly, she takes another step back to inspect her clothes and the scabby bedspread that covers her shoulders, torso, and knees. It’s wailing with a blazing mix of maroon and electric crimson, it’s glistening and it’s caked with guts and muscle tissue. She chokes back a sob and kicks at the graphite nests of lint and pill wool that have gathered around her feet as the sun disappears behind a diaphanous mural of stained glass and mourning trees.

___

 

“… so she just kept raving about all the cats she used to live with before everything happened, and then she told me to sort the jam jars in alphabetical order.”

Ending his report with an exasperated sigh, Carl rips out a chunk of yellow green grass and throws it in the direction of the small pond that serves as the nodal point where all the streets of Alexandria run together like the radial threads of an orb web that’s glazed with thick, tar black hoar frost.

“You know what they say”, she counters and sweeps away the culms that have landed on her black hoodie and her pair of grey leggings, “A tidy house, a tidy mind.”

In lieu of an answer, Carl screws up his face like he’s about to unleash the full potential of his pubertal sourness. Ever since Denise gave him the green light to go and practice shooting again, he has been eager to apply for shifts and perimeter checks – much to his father’s displeasure.

They fought about it for days, resulting in Carl to become a professional at slamming doors shut and Rick to mutate into a full-fledged mother hen. She took the role of the conciliator, carefully mediating between two notorious bullheads.

Out of fear that Carl would steal off in secret – something she’s sure he’s doing anyway – they all agreed on allowing the boy to do his bit, and in the true fashion of an angst-ridden helicopter parent, Rick chose the least dangerous occupation for his son: helping out in the pantry and thereby getting monitored by a garrulous cat-lover. It didn’t really help in terms of Carl dropping his cranky attitude, but at least dinner time changed back into a soothing flow of silly stories and general peacefulness.

“A tidy house is _boring_ ”, Carl grumbles.

“Ah, so _that’s_ why you prefer to sleep in a pigsty.”

“You’re funny.”

His dour tone tugs at the corners of her mouth and her chuckle is unstoppable as it jumps up and down her throat and then leaps on to knock against the back of her teeth until it’s finally free to swing off and hop and bob along the lentic pondside, its dormant, sodalite surface reflecting the infinite depth of the sky that hovers high above them.

To ease his current grumpiness, she pats the boy’s back before she moves her glance to Judith, who’s snuggled against her chest and quite busy chewing at the ends of her braids with enthusiastic curiosity. She remembers André doing the same when she put him to bed, and her smile becomes lugubrious as scattered echoes of the screaming forest arrive with a frail puff of wind.

Carl seems to notice. He shifts his weight and leans into her side, causing his hat to sail down into his lap when he shuffles closer and rests his head against her shoulder. Touched by his display of affection, she coils her arm around him and tries to block out the rising clamour that’s creeping into her auditory passage.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks, caution and concernment dominating his subtle voice break; with each passing day, he seems to adopt a little more of his father’s gruff yet strangely canorous drawl.

“André.”

There’s no need to deny it, no need to draw up walls. Carl begins to stir and pulls back with an expression that’s tumbling and stumbling at the border between diffidence and concealed trepidation, and she looks at him. At this brave, beautiful boy, who – along with his baby sister – saved her without even knowing it.

“Are you mad at me?”

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because I told Dad before he went out to look for you.”

Taken aback, she knits her brows in confusion. They talked about this on her first night at Rick’s house, and up to now she’s been more than sure that he _knew_ she wasn’t mad at him, that she didn’t blame him for breaking some sort of unspoken code of confidentiality. Yeah. Up until now, she thought he knew she would never hold it against him.

As a matter of fact, she’s glad that Carl decided to make the foray because even though she could’ve told Rick about her dead son, she never did. She _wants_ to, but André’s loss – the fact that she couldn’t protect him, the fact that he isn’t with her anymore, the fact that he’s _gone_ – is still beyond her sometimes, and in those moments, she remains shell-shocked. In those moments, she remains speechless and crippled with grief.

“I’m not mad at you”, she says, suddenly desperate to assure him that he didn’t do anything wrong, “I don’t think I could _ever_ be mad at you or this precious little cub”, as if right on cue, Judith turns her head and smiles up at her, a lonely dreadlock still secured between her baby teeth; Carl chortles and she joins him, revelling in the pleasant swell of serenity that washes over her whenever she’s spending time with her kids – the kids that Rick gave her in a night full of tears, confessions, and silent realizations.

“What about Dad?”

She takes a second to think back to how they parted this morning, how his discountenance of her eagerness to leave the lulling waters of inaction filtered through the appeasing warmth of his embrace, and how his unwavering forbearance _still_ makes her heart jump and ache at the same time, how it _still_ makes her shudder with blistering greed and angry impatience.

“I’m only mad at him when he’s about to do something stupid.”

“Well, he has a way with that”, Carl says, grinning impishly, “I _am_ his son after all.”

“That you are.”

They share another laugh that soon gets interrupted by Judith giving off a happy gurgle and pointing at something behind their backs, and they both flick a glance over their shoulders to catch a young girl with honey brown hair and a broody expression trudge towards them.

“Oh crap”, Carl mutters under his breath, diverting his gaze and blushing furiously as his hands fly up to bring his hair into place.

“ _Eenie!_ ”

“Hi”, Enid says with a hesitant wave of her hand, her mouth curling into a small smile at Judith’s clumsy mispronunciation of her name, “Maggie’s making catfish stew for lunch. She wants to know if you’re going to join us?”

“U-Uh…”

Regarding him with an amused side-eye, Michonne decides to put Carl out of his misery. It’s bad _and_ hilarious enough that he loses his cool and turns into a stuttering mess every time Enid does so much as look at him.

“Sure”, she chimes in, hiding a knowing smirk.

Since Rick remains conveniently oblivious to the fact that Carl has now reached an age where girls suddenly stop being _lame and annoying_ and become terrifyingly interesting instead, she can’t wait to grill the boy on his not-so-secret crush. Already planning on making him squirm as soon as they get back home, she gathers Judith into her arms and stands up with an exaggerated grunt, prompting the toddler to dissolve into tiny giggles.

As they make their way to Glenn and Maggie’s home, Judith’s babbling causes the saturnine chant of bygone days to dissipate, and she smiles while Carl almost breaks his neck in his attempt to impress Enid by spinning ridiculous tales about the alleged dangers of working in the pantry.

___

 

She meets Abraham at the guard tower as soon as the moon – full and coruscating with shades of floral white and cool silver – has blossomed among dark, feathery cloud strips that cover the night sky like sheets of platinum dust. The air is chilly, heralding the imminence of days that speak of ruthless thunderstorms and freezing temperatures. As expected, Abraham brings a couple of Griffin’s and he isn’t _that_ disappointed when she politely declines his offer to share one with him a few hours later.

“More for me then”, he ponders contentedly and blows out a swirl of perfumed smoke, “Never took you for a cigar lover anyway”, he rubs his chin and gives her a once-over before he nods like he just came to an important conclusion, “You’re too much of a health nut.”

“Excuse me?”

She tries her best at sounding offended, but he isn’t that far away from the truth: she used to get worked up over Mike being a sucker for fast food and his tendency to have a cigarette every now and then, and to outbalance her soft spot for sweets she would attend yoga workshops and kick-boxing classes as well as go for a jog in Piedmont Park on the weekends.

“It’s not a bad thing, you know?” Abraham says, “My wife would give me hell if she knew that I started smoking again.”

“You had a wife?”

She squints at him. She never took him for a family man, not with the way he and Rosita seem to deal with each other and _certainly_ not with the way he looks at Sasha from time to time.

“Yup. Kids, too”, he affirms, both pride and plaintiveness heavy in his voice, “We were all together when this whole thing started. I was protecting them, but apparently, the end of the world brought out something in me and they didn’t like it”, he leans against the railing and takes another drag, “They didn’t like the _new me_ , so they left. And then they died.”

Reluctantly, she remembers how Mike began to change once they made it to a safe camp, how he turned a little colder by the day. She didn’t stop being in love with him, but she began to loath his hopelessness, and maybe he wasn’t happy with her either. Maybe he began to loath _her_ for continuing to be a shameless optimist.

“I’m sorry”, she says to no-one in particular.

“It’s in the past”, Abraham replies, “And it’s supposed to stay there.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

“It’s not impossible, though”, he says, “Otherwise I wouldn’t’ve made it to _this_ shit show.”

She remembers all the war stories he used to boast about when they still had the church, and there’s no doubt that being stranded in the desert and waiting for a camel to shit out your set of transport keys must’ve been a fun experience compared to carting off dead women and children or putting your comrades to rest by nailing down their caskets and sending death notifications to their unsuspecting families.

She observes him from the corner of her eye. Despite all his bravado and his talent for dropping a brick in the most inappropriate situations, Abraham is probably one of the few people left, who actually _know_ how to handle a world that’s scarred and ravaged by death, devastation, and all-consuming brutality.

He must’ve figured it out at some point, and she’s about to ask him _how_ – how did he do it? how did he learn to endure the pain that never really leaves? how did he make room for it, how did he find a place where it’s allowed to breathe and simmer down and grow old gracefully? – when a faint flicker of light flashes up at the end of the road, ballooning up, drawing nearer, and waving down her chain of thought.

“It’s a long, hard road outta crazy town”, Abraham grunts as the RV pulls up at the gates, headlamps blinking three times in a row to signal that everything went well, “For both of you.”

Already on her way to the ladder, she stops, fixing her friend with a confused look because she’s too eager to get down to make out the message that’s obviously hiding behind Abraham’s words.

She’s too eager to get down because they made it back on time. _He_ made it back on time, and that’s probably the irony of their relationship, that’s one of the things Rick ends up missing since he’s always too busy being worried about her: the fact that she’s worried about _him_ , that she has to distract herself from the constant fear of being the one to receive a death notification one day, the fear of Carl and Judith being forced to grow up fatherless.

And _that’s_ exactly what made her leave him behind when they got kettled in the woods, when they were surrounded by a growing crush of walkers, when death was licking their necks and baring its teeth. That’s why she ignored his cries and became a shepherd, doomed and destined to lead the herd away – and the herd that came next. The herd in Lynchburg, the herd in Monroe, the herds in Faber and Charlottesville and Culpeper and Warrantor.

“The good news is that you’re headed in the right direction. All you gotta do know is find the right _pace_ ”, Abraham says, the moonlight peeking around his sturdy figure and an encouraging smile dispelling the dull shadows that fight hard to obfuscate his rough features, “Luckily, you guys have it bad and you’re both tough as nails, so I’m not too worried about the outcome.”

She keeps his words in mind when she watches the RV drive away to the pantry – coughing, clattering, and leaving behind eddying trails of exhaust fume like the old can that it is – and turns around to find Rick trotting in her direction. His shirt is sweat-soaked, his jeans are speckled with tiny dots of mud, and the smoke whirls around his legs. Something hot starts to wriggle free and thrash around her belly, and she grits her teeth because even when he’s covered in dirt or sweating like a pig: Rick never stops being annoyingly attractive.

Releasing a breath, she lets him fall against her and immediately wraps her arms around his midriff as his weight throws her off balance until her back hits the closed gate, causing padlocks to chink and rails to rattle. He chuckles into the side of her face and her pulse rate escalates into head-spinning tantivity. Blood and heat conflagrate her cheeks while she struggles to steady her stance. It’s hard to stay focused when he has these moments and surprises her with a sudden burst of whacked exhilaration.

“It’s good to be home”, he sighs, his body radiating with the torrid remains of hours spent rummaging through warehouses, gas stations and grocery stores; she rubs her nose against his chest.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Disenchantment sweeps in like a sullen breeze when his fingers creep up to her neck and come to linger at her pulse point. She knows that he needs this, so she waits until he’s done, until he’s ready to draw back and look at her, tilting his head and he reaching into his breast pocket to hand her a small roll of breath mints.

“Are you serious?”

“Well, I _know_ you’re not out of toothpaste yet.”

Lightly swatting at his arm and barely able to fight off a chuckle of her own, she considers his gift and stuffs it into the pocket of the coat he left for her to wear. It’s the one he shrugged on and off on their way to Terminus, and it smells like him. It smells like the rain that pelted down on them while they held each other in the glade, sobbing and panting and soaked to the bone.

“You’re not gonna share with me?” he feigns a sulky huff, but leans in when she reaches up to wipe a couple strayed curls from his forehead.

His eyes flutter closed and she redirects her gaze to the guard tower, watching Abraham giving her a thumbs-up before he pretends that he isn’t eavesdropping. Hell, he actually turns away and begins to _whistle_ , but she doesn’t have the time to dwell on the sudden wave of embarrassment that threatens to overwhelm her, so she clears her throat and squares her shoulders.

“Can we talk tomorrow?”

It must be her hand dropping from his face or the tension in her voice that calls for him to open his eyes and thankfully, his gaze is free from any revulsion. Nonetheless, she looks down at her feet, at the duct tape that holds the toecap of her left boot together, and she almost sighs as her newfound resoluteness turns into sand and trickles through her fingers.

“I’m not going to like it, am I?” he rasps.

She shakes her head.

“No.”

And he probably knows that. He probably knows that he can’t keep her behind the walls forever. No, he _definitively_ knows it because he pinches the bridge of his nose and rubs at his brow, and it kills her to see him like this, but there’s no other way around it.

“It’s okay”, he adjusts the collar of her coat, his eyes glued to the task and his fingers brushing against her skin, “Now, what’s your favourite color?”

“Huh?”

“It’s what we do before we go to sleep”, he shrugs like he didn’t just catch her on the hop by changing the subject in the plumpest manner, and she crosses her arms, still occupied with the tingling aftermath of his touch yet determined to keep a straight face.

“Emphasis on the first person plural, old man”, she deadpans, “I’m not going to tell you _anything_ since you clearly don’t care about the ru –“

“ _Michonne._ ”

“Blue”, she answers a bit sheepishly, “My favourite colour is blue.”

He squints down at his shirt and then fixes her with a fatally smug expression.

“Because you think it looks good on me?”

“Oh my God.”

She tries to shove him away but he doesn’t budge. Instead, he moves one hand down to her tailbone, slips it under her coat to let his fingers dance along the waistband of her pants. He keeps his other hand close to her nape and even if this _isn’t_ him finally getting rid of his stupid reservations: at least he’s doing a _pretty great job_ at lightening the mood.

“You _do_ think it looks good on me.”

“Go home, Rick.”

“You wanna know my favourite colour?” he doesn’t wait for her response and leans in to kiss her temple where she can feel his lips spread into yet another grin, “It’s gold.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks good on _you_.”

With that, he tugs at her necklace and lowers his head, silently pressing her to complete their ritual, and she smirks as she brings her lips to his forehead, ruffling his hair afterwards, and they both cuss out Abraham when they hear him whooping from his vantage point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know how to feel about the ending because it’s a bit… _silly_ imo. Anyhoo, since I looove learning about _your_ thoughts: feel free to share your ideas, complaints, and opinions with me :3
> 
> See you soon!
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> .
> 
> 1) The golf club building was inspired by the _Stonewall Golf Club_ which is located at Lake Manassas, VA.
> 
> 2) The concept of building a mind palace is actually a real thing. It’s also known as the method of loci, which can be used to organize memories and all kinds of information to process, maintain and recall them more efficiently. It's probably going to play a slightly bigger role on one of the upcoming chapters.
> 
> 3) Piedmont Park is a park in Atlanta, GA.


	3. The Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there.
> 
> Once again, sorry for the delay.
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
> .
> 
> .
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> 
> Disclaimer: You know the drill.
> 
> Written to _Breezeblocks_ by alt-J.

The sex is awkward at first which hardly surprises her. They’re out of practice. They’re clumsy and nervous when they try to get each other off with their hands for the first time. To her, it feels a bit like losing her virginity again and the thought alone makes sense because it says a lot about where they stand, about how special he is to her.

He grits out a mewl and comes all over her wrist, his eyes closed, his brows furrowed, his jaw clenched and his whole being reduced to what looks like carthatic relief and ephemeral bliss. It’s the sound he makes – deep, desperate and muffled by her skin – and how his body jerks into halt that almost ends her as well, but she’s too far away, too depressive, too caught up in her attempt to strain against the chains that keep her tied to the past.

Diverting his gaze, he nearly ruins it all by uttering out apologies, so she sighs, shuts him up with a kiss and fights the urge to smack him upside the head because it’s not _his_ fault. And it isn’t hers either.

Her apathy and his needless, self-imposed obligation to treat her with excessive caution is a dangerous combination, and it’s _frustrating_ because she wants him – more than he will ever know – but sometimes, she’s still infected with this subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, and he can’t do anything about it. His hand comes up to cradle her skull and even though his smile is heart-breaking, he has never been more beautiful to her than in this moment. He can’t help her and it’s eating him up inside, which – inevitably – kills her, too.

Soon, his body is slack and heavy in her arms and his breath is hot, wafting and washing over her skin like a light drizzle. He’s snoring softly and she doesn’t want him to get the wrong impression. She doesn’t want him to feel like he failed her.  
He’s a good man. He’s lost and lethal, blessed with a killer instinct and a fragile mind, and she wants him to see that. She wants him to see himself through her eyes because then he’d finally understand that he doesn’t have to move mountains to keep her close because he already had her long before they decided to share a bed.

He jolts awake a few hours later, tightening his grip on her waist and calling out for her with an edge of drowsy panic in his voice, so she runs a hand through his hair and tells him to go back to sleep. Mumbling nonsense into her cheek, he splays his fingers out over her solar plexus, and as soon as slumber has pulled him in again, she returns to the crooked gateway of her melancholy garden and the painted walls that proceed to tell how their story came to a conclusion.

She’s transfixed by the brave leader, who finds refuge in a gated paradise, the broken lover, who crowns himself king and almost dies from endless sorrow, transfixed by the silent huntress, who dives into vicious groves of false familiarity, the warrior queen, who’s never alone but always lonely and thus slowly drifts away until a heavy storm calls for their reunion and – in the face of all logic and adversity – weaves their lives back together.

He tries his best to keep her safe and sane despite his own propensity to hurl himself into a fit of madness from time to time, and she finds herself praying. She finds herself praying that – one day – Abraham’s words will come true. She finds herself praying for the future to be bright and full of opportunities.

They spend a couple of days with the kids, they spend a couple of days planning their impending supply run, and he breaks the chains when they fall back into old patterns and raid building after building – only to find out that their way back to the RV is blocked by approximately fifty walkers. They share an annoyed look and barricade themselves in the upstairs office of an abandoned warehouse, its windows boarded with fissured parts of shop-soiled pallets that allow feeble streaks of pale moonlight to bleed through the narrow slits and illuminate the stygian vaults of their sordid sanctuary.

She turns her head and he’s already there, he’s all around her, slamming her against the wall and tugging at the hair tie that has kept her braids in a low bun for the past hours. He tastes like salt and brutal urgency, and she’s plucking at the damp material of his shirt and coat, right where his heart pounds and thumps like it’s anxious to barge straight through his chest and leap into her arms.

Feasting on his ardent zeal, she sighs and shoves her backside against his seeking hands. There’s something about the way he holds her in place that leaves her stunned and steamrolled and completely subjected to a surge of appetent aggression, roiling and rippling through her bloodstream like a loose torrent. She whines a bit when he pulls away and dives down into the crook of her neck, flattening his tongue over the side of her nape and grazing his teeth along her skin until a violent throbbing begins to unclench in her stomach and then trickles down to derail between her thighs.

Here in the gloom, she can feel him grow and rise against her hip, she can feel the hairs of his untamed stubble prick and tickle her face, she can feel her spine go rigid by the time he tells her to wrap her legs around his waist with a low growl. She almost forgot about how authoritative he can be, how inexorable and determined, how possessive and domineering. He’s about to hoist her up but his blatant need to force her into submission falls flat as his knees start to buckle. He ends up losing his balance: stumbling backwards, they crash down onto the floor where they shed their clothes like snakes shed their skin, writhing and squirming and clawing and squeezing as if they’re trying to tear each other to shreds.

Peeled off wallpaper and yellowed packaging notes rustle under her back and she swats his hand away after he tries to detect her heart rate. His eyes are wide open, they’re saccadic as they rush over her face, and they blaze away like cressets, gleaming and glittering in the dark, and for the split of a second, she’s terrified of him and the true cataclysmic scale of his feelings, terrified of his devastating love for her.

Love.

Love is his language and he commands it perfectly with his lips, teeth, and tongue: from the edge of her jaw to the hollow of her throat, from the dip of her collarbone to the swell of her breasts, from the uneven trail of her ribcage to the small space beneath her bellybutton, and from the planes of her inner thighs to the pulsing pool of heat in between. Love turns him into a sculptor and a poet, and he engraves on her body with febrile precision, with his hands, steady and demanding as he uses them to pry her open and prise her legs apart. Love makes her cry out and inhale sharply, it makes her head fall to the side and her eyes roll back because it’s too fucking much.

Every flick of his tongue – every stroke and every nudge, every time he gives a hard suck or goes for a slight twirl instead – leaves her a little more breathless, a little more lost in her current inability to shut up and hold still. With her fingers buried in the curls that bloom at the crown of his head, she jerks and judders against his mouth and he groans into her, tracing his thumbs around the peaks of her hipbones, commanding time to forsake its significance and her world to go white as a single spark whips and wiggles along her spine, searing and sizzling, striking her bones and burning her from head to toe.

She pulls at his hair and he crawls back to her. His pupils are blown to the point where the familiar steel blue of his eyes has yielded to pitch-black rampancy and her legs glide off his shoulders to settle around his waist. She can see herself dripping from his lips and she _loves_ him. She loves him so much that she wants to cut him open and live between his ribs. She loves him so much that tears start to spill from the corners of her eyes when he claims her with a soft peck and a hard thrust.

She answers him by lifting her hips as sloppy kisses turn into gentle bites and loud gasps turn into helpless pleas – as nervous bucking turns into a slow, sensual rhythm that makes her deaf, dumb and blind to everything that isn’t him, his body rolling into hers and the little noises that keep tumbling from his lips. He pours a moan into her mouth, his hands roaming her waist, breasts and rear, and she hooks her fingernails into his back to feel his muscles as they twitch and spasm and _scream_ with unrestrained rapture.

She can’t explain why this is happening – why now? why _here_ of all places? – but she knows that it _doesn’t fucking matter_ because they’re both on fire, they’re both trapped in an endless plunge that rips through their cells like a blunted knife. The impact is essential, it’s a sweet death and it allows them to let go and amalgamate in the present.

And it was meant to be like this. _They_ were meant to be like this: grunting, groping, grinding and gyrating as their bodies conflate, converge and fold together, slicked with sweat and smashed into a shaking heap of raging dyspnoea and an uncompromising need for completion. They were meant to find and lose each other over and over again. They were meant to beat the odds and jump off together, and they were meant to move together, too. They were meant to find the right pace and ride it out until they’re finally free.

___

 

It’s been 20 days and she’s wading through bucolic wasteland, spearheading an army of roamers like a true commander with her head held high and her lobotomised comrades following her in file and rank. The wind is rattling at the tree tops and the rope is stretching over her gloves, cutting into the flesh of her fingers as Tweedledee turns his head to the side and spits out a guttural growl that sounds accusatory and lamenting at the same time.

“What’s the matter with him lately?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, I know. Poor guy’s mourning his baby brother, right?”

She pulls at the leash, causing Tweedledee – the weedy pack mule who’s clad in a ragged, blood-stained overall and has her trekking backpack dangling off his neck – to stumble back and fall into a high-pitched whimper that reminds her of a cowed puppy. It’s insane to think that he might be driven by something that _isn’t_ manifested in his compulsion to gormandize the living, but there’s been a noticeable change in his behaviour since she came across a landslide yesterday and had to abandon Tweedledum, the Cavaliers kid that used to carry her luggage in the first place.

She made them her pets when she tore through the UVA campus and found herself at the foot of the Rotunda where Tweedledum and Tweedledee were fighting over the remains of a dead poodle with the sun smiling down on them like a proud, delusional mother. She was disgusted with herself for being forced to rely on her old survival skills again and she remembers the chiding hum of her sword as it slipped through their limbs. She was back to square one: cold, isolated and chased by a sublime apparition that had risen from the ruins of her worst nightmares.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, babe”, Mike coos, “You didn’t have a choice.”

She doesn’t dare to look at him. She knows that he’s right behind her. She knows that he spruced himself up to mark the occasion, that he’s wearing a pair of buffed Oxford shoes and his favourite black pinstripe suit. She knows that his eyes are glazed and that his teeth are straight and chemically white. She knows that he’s dead and empty like all the others, but she _doesn’t_ know what took him so long. She doesn’t know why he decided to pop up just a couple of hours ago when tatty roads and muddy trails had started to transect the luxuriant mass of tangly, coalescing trees and starving copse wood.

“You made it.”

He’s right. She _made_ it. She’s coming down the stretch, she’s almost there, she’s so close she can smell them. The whiff of gasoline that’s stitched to Daryl’s vest, the faint fragrance of daisies that makes her think of Sasha and the lingering scent of cinnamon that reminds her of Carl and his insatiable love for sweets. They all smell different: gardenias for Glenn and clean cotton for Maggie, tobacco for Abraham and jasmine for Rosita, sandalwood for Carol and burnt wires for Eugene, baby powder for Judith and honeysuckle for Tara, old paper for Gabriel and lavender for Noah.

And Rick.

Rick smells familiar. Like soil, currants and fir needles. Like a childhood memory, cherished and comforting yet half-forgotten and stashed away behind an impenetrable barrier of anger, condolement and misery.

He wasn’t doing so well when she last saw him. For weeks, his ongoing insomnia would lead him to dark places, but there were times when she would catch him looking at her like he knew that he was choking on his impuissance and spinning out of control, and thus felt the need to apologise to her beforehand.

“You couldn’t ease him into the idea of going to Washington. You had to force it on him”, Mike says affirmatively, “You had to shove it down his throat and make him swallow because you knew it was the only way to save your people.”

And she had to do it again when they were confronted with Aaron’s hospitality – something Rick willingly misconstrued as a Trojan horse and a reason to confuse altruism with animosity, and maybe she should’ve kissed him before they left for Alexandria that night. Not because she’d been dying to do so or because she’d felt obligated to thank him for trusting _her_ instincts. No, she should’ve kissed him to assure him that he’d made the right choice, and she frowns at herself because she used to resent him – his thick drawl, his penetrating glare and his despotic demeanour –when she arrived at the prison and now he’s stuck in her head like a catchy tune, screaming out her name in despair as a daunting fleet of rotten creatures keeps clamouring in the background.

She’s worried about him and the kids, afraid that _they_ didn’t make it, afraid that she’ll have to dig empty graves and write their names down in a necrology. Their absence is a dull ache that weeps and drums deep within her chest, keen to strike roots, keen to metastasise like a malignant tumour, swelling, spreading and scattering with spiteful enthusiasm.

“You love them, don’t you?”

She stops and turns around to face him. She curls her upper lip, ready to snap at him, ready to shove and jostle him to the ground, to feel his skullcap creak and grate under the pressure of her heel until it gives in, cracking and caving in like a thin coat of fast ice. She’s ready to wipe the sole of her boot at his shoulder and stare at his broken face: his polished teeth and grey tongue, the flakes of his skin, the loose chunks of his jet-black hair, and the pasty pulp of his shattered bones, splintered flesh and squashed cartilage. She’s ready to watch tidal bores of blood, puss and brain matter gush out of the hole in his head, but his expression is a panacea for the scalding abhorrence that was just about to explode between her temples.

His face – untouched and unharmed, a face she used to think of during office hours, a face she used to pepper with kisses every morning – is flogged by sympathy and his smile – _untouched and unharmed_ , a smile she used to crave like air, a smile that used to make her heart flutter – is crooked and tinged with the slightest indication of genuine hurt.

“I do”, she breathes, unable to recognise her own voice because it’s frail and faltering and fettered to a conflicting mix of shame, defiance and sacrosanct honesty.

Mike – the no-nonsense corporate auditor, who would become engrossed in volumes of verse by Jayne Cortez and Yusef Komunyakaa on the weekends, the charming bon vivant, who’d come back from a business trip to Berlin with an exclusive copy of Fred Thieler’s _Komposition in Rot_ because he knew that she’d been desperate to get her hands on that particular painting, the loving father, who’d never miss a chance to take his son to the playground and assist him in building _the biggest sandcastle mankind has ever seen_ – tilts his head and blinks through his tears as her snarling camouflage moves past them.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“What?”

“I don’t blame you”, he shrugs and chuckles at her quandary, “They’re good for you. Picked you up and put you back together after I – and it _was_ me, we both know that – smashed you to pieces”, inhaling deeply, he twists his lips into another guilt-laden smile, “I can’t thank them enough for saving you.”

“Fuck you”, she sighs before her eyes glide up to the sky where lumps of hueless clouds have wrapped themselves around the sun, “Why are you here?”

He doesn’t answer.

If André’s blood wasn’t on his hands, she might’ve been able to condone his cowardice, she might’ve been able to forgive him one day. Against her will, she ends up mirroring his grin, and when she redirects her gaze to look at him, he’s gone, replaced by a dead policeman with sunken cheeks and a broken angle, who stares through her and bumps into her side whilst blindly following his companions.

Angered by Mike’s sudden disappearance, she unsheathes her sword and stomps towards the end of the road with a stumbling Tweedledee in tow. Her soldiers have abandoned their post without permission and she gets hit by a baleful blow of presentiment that proves to be true as soon as she has reached the ledge.

_Look._

Dozens of biters throw themselves over stepped walls. They topple over countless berms, benches and batters, they get pierced and shredded by rock bolts, and they scrape their limbs on the scree, causing showers of debris to break free and pelt down onto the host of walkers that’s already piled at the bottom of the quarry.

_Look at your mama._

It’s a deep and bulky caldron, covered with faults, shears and shotcrete. There’s a haul road at the other end of the pit, flagged by a couple of trucks that must’ve been pushed to the side by the herd itself or some sick fucks who’d been on a mission to unleash hell. Either way: at least a quarter of them is still here, hundreds, maybe even _thousands_ of them cooped up in a subsiding crater. Nausea grabs and shakes her by the throat, and she drops the leash when she spots a pillar of smoke looming on the horizon.

_Look._

Her fantasy is gone. Her people – safe and happy as they sway to the rhythm of placidity – are gone. Her friends – carefree and boisterous as they play water war on the front lawn of a picturesque family house – are gone. Her kids – flushed from the blood that’s being pumped through their veins – are gone and she barely takes notice of Tweedledee lurching towards the edge of the cliff and diving head first into a lithic sea of riprap and gritstone.

The pearls of water that jump from the roots of Glenn’s hair, the mint green fabric that spans over Maggie’s baby bump, the twinkle in Rosita’s eyes, and the way Judith ends up squealing with joy when Rick taps the tip of her nose – all the frames and details, all the traces of her wishful thinking start to self-destruct. Like a nitrate film, her dream becomes sticky and begins to oxidise, begins to separate itself from the base, begins to fade and eat itself away until there’s nothing left but a pile of brown, caustic dust.

___

 

Her head is nestled in the crook of his arm and she can hear him muttering under his breath when he pulls her close and wipes a couple of braids from her forehead. He’s _adorable_. Visibly upset and pouting like a child that has been denied its well-deserved dessert, he huffs and throws his leg over hers whilst ceaselessly tugging at the hem of her shirt.

“This is ridiculous.”

She can’t help but chuckle at the grave frustration that’s clinging to his words. While it’s indeed a shame that they were forced to put their clothes back on by the biting cold that had crept inside, the prospect of waking up coughing and sniffling quickly outweighed her desire to fall asleep undressed. Still stuck in a sex-drunk stupor, Rick had been eager to disagree until she told him to stop being a baby… to which he replied with even more of his bleating.

“You can’t have everything”, she says lightly and threads her fingers through his hair.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

He purrs into her skin and she almost rolls her eyes when his hand sneaks under her shirt. Who knew that a good romp in the sack would turn him – a hard-boiled survivalist, who always puts his personal needs behind whatever must be done for the good of all – into a touch-starved puddle of craving and clinginess? And not just that. After all that has happened to him, who knew he’d ever allow himself to be like that again? Who knew that _she’d_ ever allow herself to be like that again?

_A good romp in the sack._ Scoffing at her bad habit of trivialising the sheer beauty of physical intimacy, she thinks back to the moment he held her face, kissed her hairline and then took her with him. The moment their bodies became taut and inextricable, the moment she clamped down on him, closed her eyes and felt him warm her from within before he collapsed on top of her like a crumbling tower and buried her under his weight with his lips pressed firmly against her brow.

“What the hell”, he grumbles whilst reaching up to cup her breast, and she watches him lift his head and look around until he finds her bra hanging from the door handle; he brings his face back next to hers, “You’re _evil_.”

“You’re welcome.”

His chuckle sets fire to her belly. It’s a low rumble that speaks of mischief and playfulness, and it only grows louder when she tries to fix him with a warning glare that probably comes across as half-assed. He starts to _squeeze_ and she hates him with the passion of a thousand suns because he’s teasing her and on top of that, he’s enjoying it, he’s having the time of his life when she fails control her breathing – and yet she’s also weirdly proud of him.

Actually, she’s proud of them both. The RV is currently out of reach, parked in the open and handed on a silver platter for every post-apocalyptic burglar to snatch away while they’re trapped in a dank building that’s cramped with useless junk and surrounded by a battalion of dead bouncers, but they’re tough as nails – as Abraham has stated so eloquently – and tomorrow, they’re going to deal with all the obstacle this world has thrown in their way this time. They’re going to deal with it because they can.

“I want us to stay like this forever.”

“No, you don’t. You want us to drive back home first thing in the morning and make sure that Carl hasn’t touched my secret stash of Baby Ruths. I mean, sharing _is_ caring, but there’s a limit to everything”, she expects him to laugh, but all he does is withdraw his hand and stare at her with a small smile that knocks the air out of her lungs, “What?”

“You said ‘home’”, if possible, his dimples become even more prominent, “I know you said it before, but this time – this time, you _meant_ it, didn’t you?”

Dear God, he’s going to be the death of her. He sounds so cautious, so fucking hopeful, and he’s so much wiser than he pretends to be. She wants to devour him. A rush of yearning threatens to push her forward and make her kiss him senseless, and she has to recompose herself when expectation seems to rumple his forehead.

“Y-Yeah”, she says, slightly embarrassed since it took her so long to answer him, “It’s just”, she sighs, “It feels like things fell into place recently.”

And that’s it. That’s what kept her awake at night for so long: the process of working through her pain and realising that it’s _their_ bed, _their_ house, _their_ home.

“Well, _some_ things definitively fell into place _tonight_ ”, he quickly retorts and suddenly, he’s bug-eyed because he obviously didn’t think he’d actually end up warding off her confession with some sleazy innuendo, “Wait –“

“Wow.”

“That’s not what I was trying to – _let me explain_.”

She does. She tries to, but his frantic rambling – something about him being a huge idiot which, to be honest, is yesterday’s news – gets drowned out by a chuckle that soon turns into a giggle and ultimately into a loud, mirthful, side-splitting guffaw, zagging and ricocheting through the cosy darkness that’s engulfing around them like a safety blanket. Despite knowing that she doesn’t have to hide from him, her ten-year-old self, who’s been taught not to laugh at the expense of others, propels her to slap a hand over her mouth and orders her to pull herself together and regain her countenance. Unsurprisingly, Rick has other plans.

“Don’t do that”, he demands softly before wriggling his arm out from under her to prop himself up; gently, he pulls her hand away and lowers his head until she can feel his lips hovering over hers, “Don’t _ever_ do that, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Good girl.”

“Wha –“

Completely thrown by his comment and thus caught between amused indignation and another fit of sniggering, she’s too slow to come up with a nimble-witted response, resulting in her weak protest to get choked off by a kiss that dilutes and scrambles her thoughts. All to soon his tongue slips inside and once again, she’s overwrought by the profoundness of their relationship. They were strangers, comrades and partners in crime, and now there’s something between them that no word of any language can do justice.

He shifts his weight and glides on top of her, and the pressure of his hips, the way he digs his fingers into the delicate space beneath her jawline compels her to yank at his curls and graze his scalp like she did when she woke up in the infirmary and found him hunched over her bedside with his arm slung across her waist and his head resting next to her pelvis. In the back of her mind she knows that he was already ahead of her back then, that he had to slow down and wait for her to catch up. And she’s grateful for his patience.

“Supply runs are much more fun when you’re around”, he murmurs in-between kisses and grants her with a wolfish grin before he bites her lower lip; he’s talented, but they’ll have to get at least a few hours of sleep, so she pokes his side until he rolls onto his back, “Alright.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not”, he says dryly, patting his chest and signalling her where to rest her cheek on; once she’s settled against him, his arm curls around her shoulders, “Question time.”

“Just one”, she warns him because she still vividly remembers the night he went into Constable mode and wouldn’t stop interrogating her about her first boyfriend Trevor, who’d been her lab partner in high school and later hit the headlines due to his main role in a short-lived soap opera about a winery in Paso Robles; at some point, she was so annoyed with Rick’s tireless prodding that she had to throw a pillow at him.

“Fine”, he trails his fingers along her upper arm, “Lennon or McCartney?”

Her answer comes like a shot.

“Oh please, they both got nothing on George Harrison”, she explains, “They were good, but he was a _genius_. And how dare you forget about Ringo Starr?”

“Rooting for the underdogs, are we?” she can hear the smile in his voice and her heart becomes so full that she can barely take it.

“If being a member of one of the most influential rock bands _ever_ makes you an underdog”, the corners of her mouth jump upwards when she thinks about her father and how he used to introduce her to T. Rex, Nina Simone and The O’Jays in order to encourage her to get familiar with _the good stuff_ when she was still a kid, “What about you?”

“I think I’ll have to go with Lennon.”

“Sure, you do. He was cocky as hell.”

"Hush."

Swatting at her elbow, he breathes out a chortle and dips his head to press a lingering kiss to the bridge of her nose. The floorboards are hard as rock and it’s freezing, but the fact that they’re here, curled around each other and – for once – not ensnared by the nagging fear of losing each other, leaves them giddy and full of anticipation for what’s to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you soon(ish)!
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> 1) Tweedledum and Tweedledee are the names of the fictional characters in _Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There_ by Lewis Carroll.
> 
> 2) “[…] the Cavaliers kid […]” is the same lost pet walker that appeared in the third chapter of Tremor… and look at me being all pompous and idiotic by referring to my own stupid stuff.
> 
> 3) The Rotunda is a building situated on UVA campus in Charlottesville, VA.
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> 4) People/bands mentioned in this chapter: Jayne Cortez, Yusef Komunyakaa, Fred Thieler, T. Rex, Nina Simone, The O’Jays, and The Beatles.
> 
> 5) Paso Robles is a city in California. Apparently, the area is indeed known for its vineyards and wineries. #youneverstoplearning


	4. The Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there.
> 
> I wasn’t in the mood for writing canon stuff lately, so it took me a while to finish the penultimate chapter of this story, but here you go.
> 
> Happy reading!
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> Disclaimer: *groans like an annoyed teenager*
> 
> Written to _Hold On, We're Going Home_ by Drake  & Majid Jordan.

There are still days when she’s convinced that she doesn’t belong here. Days when she’s stretched and clinched and meshed into a tight knot of guilt, grief, and hypervigilance, days when the act of breathing reminds her that she’s only alive because other people – friends, brothers, sisters, and sons – have died on her account. There are still days when he’s convinced that she’s a mirage. Days when he’s anxious and irritable, days when she has to keep him from checking her pulse every hour.

And it’s unbearable sometimes, unfathomable and impossible to put into words, but they’re working on it. They’ve found a place, _built_ a place, back in the cerebral coves of their tortured minds, where they can lay it all to rest, where there’s enough room for all the horrors they had to endure and lug around.

This morning, soft sheets and a handful of flimsy sunbeams are waiting for her when she drags a hand over her face, rubs the sleep out of her eyes, and doesn’t suppress a big, contented yawn. Winter has launched itself at their feet, thin layers of frost are covering the roofs, streets, and meadows, but the first snow is yet to come and of course, they’re prepared: the pantry is bursting with canned goods and firewood, the walls are intact, and the construction crew just finished building a functioning cold store for less durable food. However, despite the general easiness that has established itself recently, they all know better than to let their guard down, so prevailing safety by upholding the usual schedule remains a top priority.

Eager to shake the remaining shards of doziness out of her limbs, she begins to stretch her arms and legs. The temperatures have dropped below moderate at night and the sheer notion of leaving the bed shoots a prickling chill down her spine but fortunately, she doesn’t have to get ready yet. Fortunately, there’s a comfortable weight pinning her down to the mattress.

“Stop moving”, he whines, “Stick around.”

His jaw is smooth, but she knows him well enough to accept the fact that it’s just a matter of time until he’s going to look like a homeless person again – a sexy, dishevelled homeless person to be exact. She smiles at the thought of him purposely abandoning the razor that’s placed next to his toothbrush, and she remembers the feeling of his scruff scraping against her thighs. Maybe his face _should_ lose the war again.

A drowsy laugh breaks from her throat when he breathes out a sigh that strokes and pokes a nerve in the crook of her neck. With her lips brushing his temple, she twists a stray curl around her index finger and pulls lightly. His body is draped over her torso, his ribcage is snuggled against hers, and he’s warm and soft and so strikingly different from the ruthless brute that would stick his fingers into her gaping bullet wound, so different from the man who would see her as nothing but a useful, temporary asset.

“I had a dream like this.”

He’s slurring and mumbling into her nape, seemingly unable to muster the energy to move a muscle, and she can’t blame him. They had a good night: no nightmares, no restlessness – just the two of them stripping down and dropping off in each other’s arms after a long day of him going through the inventory with Olivia and Gabriel, and her and Sasha playing chess for a pack of king-sized Rocky Road Mint bars during their shift up in the guard tower. She can tell that he hasn’t even opened his eyes yet, so she tightens her grip on him, utterly delighted with his appreciative purr.

“A dream?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t elaborate on his statement and she’s tempted to pick his brains, tempted to obtain some details, but if there’s one thing she has learned about being with him, it’s that there’s no need to talk about everything at once, no need to anatomise all the shreds and splinters of their history in one go, no need to rush things and dissect every single aspect of their relationship as quickly as possible.

“We’re off today, right?” he asks.

“We are.”

“Good for us. The kids aren’t even up yet, and Daryl – well, I don’t really care about where he is right now”, his fingers dance across her bare stomach and his lips fall against the joint of her jaw, “You wanna kill some time before all hell breaks loose?”

“You mean before we get to _enjoy_ breakfast with a grumpy twelve-year-old, a grown man, who has never heard of table manners, and a toddler, who still can’t figure out the difference between applesauce and a face mask?”

“Yup.”

“I don’t know”, she muses, feigning vacillation whilst simultaneously allowing him to wedge his hand between her thighs, “What do you have in mind?”

Finally, he dives out of her embrace. His grin is coltish, flickering across his face like an ECG trace, and the glint in his eyes guides a volley of shockwaves through her body. Giggling into his neck, she welcomes him as he descends upon her, mouth and fingers forge-welded onto her skin and his lazy drawl cutting through the very roots of her bated resolve.

“You’ll see”, he says and there’s no fucking way that he knows how much she needs to see him like this, how often she used to sleep under a blanket of damp moss and mouldy leafage whilst dreaming of him, how many times she used to close her eyes and watch him tilt his head back and curve his mouth into a smile while the sun caressed his rugged features.

Over the past five weeks, she’s found out that he likes to take his time, boss her around and put his mounting stamina to the test. She’s found out that he likes to put her mounting stamina to the test, too – mostly by feasting on her, by eating her out, drinking her up, and making her feel as if she’s about to have a stroke before he replaces his tongue with his cock and then drags her over the edge in a slow and tantalising fuck that leaves the two of them speechless, boneless, and gasping for air in the aftermath.

And it isn’t _just_ sex – she’s well aware of that – but she refuses to call it making love. She can be terribly foolish at times and he actually broke into laughter and called her a nerd once she told him about her personal ragbag of lexical abominations – sappy, cringe-worthy expressions like _being the apple of someone’s eye_ or _a match made in heaven_. Needless to say it didn’t take long until he was hauling her out of the bed and steering her into the bathroom where he slammed the door of the shower stall shut, gathered her into his arms, and indeed _made love to her_ under a soothing spray of warm water.

“You’ll see”, he says again, curling his fingers and piling the pressure until she starts to tense up and grind against his hand; he’s tender and merciless and she proves to be just as cruel as him when she reaches down – not-so-accidentally brushing the shallow syncline between his hip bones in the process – and incites him to rock into her fist with a warning growl.

Yeah, he likes a lot of things: sleeping on his stomach, hunting for grammatical errors in top-class shortstory collections, cleaning his gun on the front porch during sunset, shrouding his smile behind an ineffectual frown, whistling _Samson and Delilah_ whilst doing the dishes, kissing her stretch marks, and playing with her braids whenever she’s kneeling in front of him. What he _loves_ , though, is looking up to her – in the truest, most literal sense.

It’s why she doesn’t have to stir his excitement any further, why he flops onto his back and pulls her on top of him. It’s why his skin turns pink, and why his impatient grunting soon degenerates into a needy dirge. It’s why they both end up cursing and whimpering under their breath by the time she’s seated herself upon him.

Unwilling to waste any time, she braces her hands right next to his temples and strikes up a steady pace, propelling him to clutch at her waist and to press the back of his head into the pillow. He’s vulnerable underneath her, slack-jawed and bashful and oddly submissive. Gnashing his teeth, he brings his palm up to cover her sternum, and his cheeks flare up with a deep, dark blush.

“Was this part of your dream, too?” she croons, opting for a bounce that causes her arms to buckle and her vision to pan to black for a second; his response is another stream of prayers and obscenities, delivered in the form of a strained moan that dangles and slumps from his lips like a lumbering dew drop falls off a blade of grass.

“ _Jesus Christ._ ”

“Just answer the question, Rick.”

His eyes – full of love, full of awe and wonder – flutter shut and she’s fascinated by the spectacle of his larynx quaking and trembling in his throat. She’s fascinated, yes, and she’s grinning like an idiot because _this_ – this is _her_ making and she wants to congratulate herself on her ability to bring out this side of him with nothing more than a roll of her hips.

“N-No, it wasn’t”, his brows twitch as he blinks at her, “Thank God this is real.”

She hums against his lips and fails to hold back a gasp when he loops his arm around her lower back, gives a gentle slap to her backside, and snaps his hips upwards to start a conversation that’s spiked with pleasurable pain. The pad of his thumb leaves a brand mark on her spine and, not for the first time, his words send her into a scalding tailspin. Not for the first time, his words make her reel and falter. Not for the first time, his words spread and swamp and overcharge her veins, and sink into her soul.

“I love you”, he purls softly - _reverently_ \- never losing his rhythm as he sits up, draws up his knees, cradles her against his chest, and cranes his neck to kiss the tip of her ear while she’s holding on to his shoulders, breaking and shattering in his lap with a muffled cry, “I love you so fucking much.”

___

 

At the north end of the cemetery, under the fickle shadow of a curved scarlet oak, she picks a crumpled leaf from the top of the waist-high basalt pillar they set up when the ground still deferred to the ripping force of rusty scoops and shovels. Judith – nestled under the thick flaps of her coat and resting her head against her clavicle – is gibbering around her bright red pacifier, mumbling half-words that belong to a secret language children tend to unlearn once their parents start to actively correct them.

She looks at the pillar and remembers how they spent hours introducing their former loved ones to each other. How he told her that his wife had been a terrible cook and that his best friend used to collect foreign coins and postage stamps. How he told her that he was glad when he found out about them because it gave him the opportunity to reciprocate the resentment Lori used to hold against him, and how he told her that it all crumbled to dust at the very moment he climbed down into the tombs and got hit by the metallic stench of blood.

She looks at the letters – _L_ , _S_ , _M_ , and _A_ , carved into stone with blunted knives and yet legible, neat, and elegantly contoured – and remembers how she told him about Mike’s obsession with Scandinavian crime fiction. How she told him about the morning André turned three. How she told him that she found her baby boy sitting upright in his bed at the break of dawn, staring at his legs and waiting for them to magically extend because he used to believe that people only got taller on their birthdays which Rick declared _one of the cutest stories he has ever heard_.

“It’s beautiful.”

She doesn’t have to guess who’s approaching her and she can’t stop herself from silently thanking Glenn and his glaring incompetence when it comes to building a crib for his unborn child because otherwise, Rick would be standing right next to her, tilting his head and squinting his eyes like always does when he’s trying to hide his anger in the most transparent way. Exhaling with relief, she turns around to face the shell of a woman, who used to be unbreakable, untouchable, unstoppable in her need to keep everyone safe.

“Rick’s not here.”

“Good. He’s not my biggest fan right now.”

There’s something brittle, bitter, and rueful about Carol’s smile, and she doesn’t know how to respond to it at first. Hell, she doesn’t even know _if_ she’s supposed to respond to it at all. Not because Rick seems quite adamant about his decision to give Carol the silent treatment. Not because Carol _didn’t_ cross a line when she goaded him into postponing his grief and seizing power instead, kicking off a domino line of major disasters that could’ve been prevented if someone would’ve knocked some sense into him in the nick of time. No. It’s not _her_ problem but _theirs_ , so screws up her courage to give an answer that’s neither based on assurance nor on speculation.

“He’ll get over it.”

“I doubt that. He didn’t – he wasn’t himself without you. He was falling apart and I wanted him to stop. I _needed_ him to stop, so I rubbed salt into the wound. I made him snap. And then I set him on killing the doctor and –“

“He knew what he was doing. He knew it was wrong and he didn’t care”, she objects and recalls him sitting at her bedside, his index finger nervously tracing the creases of her palm as he confessed his sins to her, “He was angry, Carol. He was angry and he was _scared_.”

“Did he tell you about what happened to –“

“He did.”

She flicks her gaze to the four wooden crosses closest to the chapel’s back entrance and tries not to gag. A whole family slaughtered because _her_ family had been stuck on a collective power trip, because they had refused to pause for a moment and _think_.

It’s not only anger that makes you stupid. It’s fear, too. Blind and blatant fear.

She knows that because it’s still there, thrashing and flailing around in the gunmetal depths of Carol’s eyes. She knows that from experience. She knows that because she was consumed by it, high on it when she stood on a cliff and offered her condolences while death kept calling for her from the bottom of a rotten lake – shrill-voiced and hysterical, hungry and agonised like a new-born that’s been ripped from its mother’s bosom. She knows that because, back then, it felt like her mind was full of scorpions, full of shard-born beetles that would pull plugs and scratch at her brainpan, driven by destructiveness and overtaken by a storm tide of scornful caprice.

“He’s avoiding me”, Carol says, and it’s clear as day that she’s not talking about Rick anymore.

“Is that why you’re with Tobin now?”

“No”, her response is a scoff, immediately followed by a sound that dithers between a mirthless laugh and a dry sob, “I don’t know.”

She peers down at her daughter and places a kiss to the top of her head. And then, without thinking, she takes a step forward, bridges the space between them, holding out her hand and fighting back a chuckle when she’s met with nothing but weepy confusion. It’s strange how even the most mutualistic relationships tend to crumble when both parties refuse to do as much as _contemplate_ the idea of making a compromise.

She can’t help them – _obviously_ – because Carol made a mess and because Daryl isn’t exactly forthcoming in terms of burying the hatchet. He prefers to sulk and act like he’s not giving a shit when, in truth, he’s on the verge of throwing a fit.

“Just give him some time”, she says as a caravan of tears sidles down her friend’s cheek.

“I’m sorry.”

She smiles.

“It’s gonna be okay.”

And with that, they lapse into silence. With that, she interlaces and squeezes their fingers while Judith grabs a fistful of Carol’s jacket and pulls her closer. With that, she lets her gaze roam across the graveyard, momentarily rapt in a vision of the future that isn’t bleak or hopeless because in spring, they’re going to add clusters of stonecrop and houseleek and a bunch of field poppies to the Grimes-Walsh-Anthony family grave.

Because in spring, things will be different.

Because even though she can’t remember who came up with the idea first, she knows that someday, all the wooden crosses will be substituted with tombstones, with medium-sized boulders of raw slate and weather-worn granite, and that all the bare mounds of dry soil will be cakes and coated with gaudy wildflowers, fern, and blackberry bushes. She knows is that Carol and Abraham deserve a memorial for their dead children, that Daryl and Sasha deserve a memorial for their big brothers, and that Maggie deserves a memorial for her father and sister. She knows is that, even in death, this community will continue to grow and flourish.

___

 

It’s been 33 days and there’s always another herd to blend in with, always another walking pound of flesh and bones that mistakes her for a fellow soldier and salutes her with a companionate snarl. There’s always another mask of blood and guts daubed on her face and there’s always another empty building offering her to stay the night with lovely cushions of dust and the enticing scent of desolation, all wrapped up in dilapidated rags, straggling ivy, and sheets of cracked concrete.

The rain is tapping against the roof of the ticket office, reminding her of the clicking and clunking of the typewriter her father would use whenever his job as a senior horticulturalist at the Atlanta Botanical Garden allowed him to indulge in his favourite hobby and compose a couple of short stories. He’d been a smart man, her Dad: thoroughly enthused by music, art, and literature, deeply invested in political and Civil Rights-related issues, and above all, her mentor, idol, and best friend.

Growing up without her mother, who’d died of pancreatic cancer when Michonne was still an infant, hadn’t always been easy. There’d been times when her father wouldn’t sleep for days, when he would sit in the living room, flip through old photo albums, and trace his fingers along the lines of the face of the bubbly librarian he’d met and fallen in love with on a stiflingly hot summer days in 1967. Despite her young age she would try to soothe his pain and drag him to Grant Park where they would play badminton or count as many coneflowers and bottlebrush buckeyes they could find – and, more often than not, she would succeed.

“Why did you leave?”

His low whisper lures her back into the present, seeps into her bones, and makes her heart clench with wistfulness. He’s always with her these days, strolling after her with his hands clasped behind his back, talking a mile a minute. He’s like an overprotective, overexcited, and overly didactic tour guide, listing random _fun facts_ about all the places they come across in his desperate attempt to cheer her up.

He’s failing spectacularly so far.

“Michonne?”

She tries to keep her head down, tries to shut him out, but finds him sitting cross-legged on the floor just a few inches away from her, a full-scale replica of the man, who’d turned into an animal to protect his family from a gang of rapists: covered in mud, blood-smeared, and disturbingly calm. The sight of him makes her squirm and shiver with the same sense of radical respect that held her body in a vice grip when he stomped past her and then lunged at his next opponent.

“Tell me”, he says, “Why did you leave?”

Once again, she ends up thinking about her father and how he was doomed to wither away in a hospital bed – his veins stuffed with Temodal, his cheeks sunken, and his throat raw – while the weeds in his head continued to grow and slowly turned him into an irascible bully. She ends up thinking about his interment, too, and grounds her jaw.

“Because I hate funerals.”

A crooked grin cuts across his face and she doesn’t want to talk about this. She doesn’t want to talk to _him_. She wants him gone because he looks like he’s struggling to suppress his laughter, which doesn’t make any sense since there’s clearly nothing to laugh about.

“So, you think I’m dead?”

Stung by his incredulous tone, she drops her hands into her lap. He came to mock her, didn’t he? He came to pull the wool over her eyes, to sucker her into believing that there might be a chance that he’s still alive, that she shouldn’t’ve left the quarry, that she should’ve kept looking for him. He came to feed and fuel her bad conscience. He’s her personal Erinys and she gives him a tight-lipped smile to show him that she’s finally seen through his game.

“Otherwise you wouldn’t be here to haunt me now, would you?”, she growls, digging her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from screaming.

“And here I thought you were an optimist.”

That’s it.

Within seconds, she’s back on her feet, gathering her sword and bag, the straps slapping soundly against her chest and shoulders. She peers out of the broken window and spots a small group of roamers drawing closer from the far end of the road, blurred by a thick veil of raindrops as they slip over the wet ground. Nothing she can’t handle – as opposed to Rick, who, doesn’t even think about keeping his fucking mouth shut.

“What are you doing?”

She ignores him, curses him in her mind, and ponders over her next move. It’s simple: yesterday, she passed a town called Front Royal, but didn’t bother to look for any supplies. Maybe she should revise that decision. Maybe she should go there and then set out for Winchester, and then Martinsburg, and then Hagerstown, and then –

“And then what?” he asks and suddenly, his scathing amusement has changed into cheerless agitation, “You’re gonna run away until your lungs burn out? Until you’re one of them?”

She can see his arms coil around her waist from behind, but she can’t _feel_ him, so she turns in his embrace and shifts her gaze from the Tuscan red spots that stand out against the off-white fabric of his shirt up to his tired eyes. He’s so close yet so insubstantial, so fictitious and illusive, and she’s sick of it. Outside, the cadence call of another lost troop proceeds to rise in a deafening crescendo, and her throat grows tight because maybe this is all she’ll ever have: a life among ghosts and ghouls.

The answer is simple.

“No.”

“Do you think I’d allow myself to get killed before I had the chance to take you home?”

“ _No_.”

“Do you want me to take you home?”

“Yes.”

His smile returns with a vengeance, exposing the very teeth that pierced a stranger’s neck and dug for blood. He leans in and sighs, and if he were real, she would break down or tear up at the sensation of his breath caroming and sidesweeping her skin.

“Well, go and find me then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know about your opinion on this update and have a wonderful day!
> 
> See ya!  
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> 1) _Samson and Delilah_ is a traditional song which has been performed by several artists. I highly recommend the Dead Set live version by Grateful Dead as well as Reverend Gary Davis’ recording of the song.
> 
> 2) “[…] it felt like her mind was full of scorpions, full of shard-born beetles […]” is a reference to a couple of similar lines in William Shakespeare’s _Macbeth_. You can find the original text in Act III, Scene 2.
> 
> 3) The Atlanta Botanical Garden is – as the name implies – located in Atlanta, GA. Grant Park is also located in Atlanta, GA.
> 
> 4) Erinyes (pl.) are – primarily female – deities of vengeance. In ancient Greek literature, they’re usually depicted as the physical embodiment of guilt and/or pangs of remorse.
> 
> 5) Front Royal is a town located northeast of the Shenandoah National Park, VA.
> 
> 6) Winchester is a city in Virginia, Martinsburg is a city in West Virginia, and Hagerstown is city in Maryland.


	5. The Springtide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey there.
> 
> Time to put this little fic to rest. Thank you for your support!
> 
> Happy reading!
> 
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> Disclaimer: Ugh.
> 
> Written to _Lovely Day_ by Bill Withers.

Her dreams have morphed into upslurred susurrations. They have become so tame and quiet, so easy to cope with because these days, the body she would flee from in her sleep for so many weeks remains wrapped around her in the morning, grounding and anchoring her, reminding her that she’s alive, that she’s loved, and that the woods won’t come to steal her away again.

With the trees buckling on mail coats of cream, champagne, and cherry blossom pink, the desire to huddle up in their houses and leave the gates closed gets replaced by the increasing need to pick up where they left before the snow forced them to take a break from expanding their community, and for the first time since the world has dwindled into chaos, there’s music breezing through the air.

There are trumpets and violins, and there’s a jiggling bass line, chased by wispy clouds and dragonflies as swells of laughter and animated chattering mix with the soundscape. The first verse soars up from the back porch and her lips stretch into a smile. Even after all these years, the lyrics are still carved into the back of her mind, conjuring up pictures of a breakfast table sumptuously set with an assortment of fruits, cereals, and pastries.

About two weeks ago, Rick came home with a dusty box of LPs, telling her and Carl to meet him in the living room and to set up the portable record player so that they could take a closer look at his lucky find. Consequently, the evening resulted in a journey through time as they jumped from Charlie Feathers, The Ventures, and Fats Domino to Elvis Costello and The Police – and Carl, who couldn’t stop himself from cringing and rolling his eyes at his father’s try at singing along to Chuck Berry’s _Almost Grown_ , immediately took a liking to Patti Smith, The Clash, and King Crimson.

It was long past midnight when they stumbled upon the Bill Withers record her Dad would put on every Sunday morning, and she remembers wiping at her tearstained cheeks when Rick pulled her up to her feet and gently coerced her into a silly dance that teemed with clumsy exuberance, propelling Carl to groan in feigned disgust as he made his escape and sprinted up the staircase with lightning speed.

Swinging her hips to the beat, she taps her chin with the handle of her paintbrush and takes a step back to inspect her work. Her eyes glide over spherical patches of taupe brown and beige before they settle on a thick, pollen-coloured streak that fades away in a small curlicue, resembling a loose barrier tape that waves and flutters in the wind. It’s a 40" x 60" mural of Bo and she can almost hear André’s excited giggling, bristling with the wild joy that used to guard his unquenchable thirst for harmless quixotry.

“You’re such an overachiever”, Carl says dryly after he sidles up to her, apparently spent from the exhausting task of perpetuating Rainbow Cat on the iron wall, “No wonder that Maggie insisted on you being the one to paint Hershel’s room.”

“You’re not so bad either, but I took a couple of art classes when I was in college, so I may have a leg-up on you here”, she concedes, genuinely happy about the fact that she’s in her element again, “Didn’t think it would come in handy in the apocalypse, though.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure Glenn and Dad would’ve ruined it.”

“Oh, there’s absolutely no doubt about that.”

She casts a brief glance over to her left where Enid and Judith are still busy with turning the bottom half of the wall into a brightly coloured meadow, slapping their palms against the metal to create an armada of duck blue flower heads.

She was ecstatic when she found the huge stack of untouched paint buckets on her last supply run with Abraham, Carl, and Gabriel, who’d stepped in last minute since Rick came down with a cold that quickly reduced him to a cantankerous cry-baby and had him coughing and snivelling into a growing heap of tissues whilst proclaiming that he was _perfectly fine_.

“You know, I had a lot of fun in that hardware store in Woodbridge until you thought it’d be cool to scare Gabriel with a dead rat”, she chides, dropping the paintbrush to the ground to pull her son into a loose embrace, “You almost made him cry.”

“I already told you it was an accident”, he replies with a poorly concealed smirk, “And you were laughing, too, remember?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

They both snort out a chuckle and she turns her head to find the rest of her family scattered over the unmown lawn of the backyard. Abraham, Daryl, and Eugene keep a strict watch on the slabs of marinated meat that’s sizzling over the large makeshift brazier whereas Sasha lays the dinner table with the help of Aaron, Spencer, and Rosita. Her smile broadens when she catches Tara and Denise nattering away with Carol, Glenn, Morgan, and Siddiq, a new – and somewhat shy – arrival whose experience as a former EM resident earned him a solid and valued position in the infirmary. Maggie, cradling her new-born son in her arms and accepting a glass of water from Olivia, has made it her mission to instruct Eric, Tobin, and Gabriel about how to arrange the buffet table.

They’re all more or less dressed up, and the overall contentment proceeds to unfurl and unfold before her like a lazy lotus flower. And it’s astounding. It’s suspiciously perfect, it’s treacherously similar to the spotless fantasy she would get lost in when she was on her way to the quarry, but it’s real and she’s tired of not believing her eyes.

“Hey”, Carl murmurs carefully, “You okay?”

Oddly enough, Rick asked her the same question when they were swaying back and forth in the living room with their foreheads merged together and their hearts beating in sync. Now he’s up on the porch, leaning against the wooden banister, watching her whilst nursing a bottle of pale ale. Meeting his gaze, she sticks out her tongue at him, causing him to shake his head and flash her a lopsided grin. As always, he’s donning his trusty boots and jeans, completed with an off-white cotton shirt that matches her long-sleeved tunic dress and the pair of low-cut All Star sneakers that cling to her feet.

“Yeah”, she says.

“Then I’m okay, too”, Carl beams, satisfaction suffusing his tone as he unknowingly recites his father’s response, “By the way, I liked what you said during the ceremony. About Dad, Judy, and me being your home”, he pauses and looks at her, the corner of his mouth quirking up and his good eye flickering with mirth, “It’s been like that for me since we had that discussion about soy milk.”

Not bothering to fight back her tears, she reaches up to grasp at her necklace, tracing the outline of the golden ring she received this morning when they were all gathered in the chapel, and it doesn’t pain her to know that the M-shaped pendant Mike presented her with on their second anniversary now sleeps on the wooden gravesite of her nightstand, buried and sheltered in a small jewel case. It doesn’t pain her to know that, just five hours ago, she sealed the box with a silent prayer as the final crust of battle-worn scurf slipped from her skin.

Once again, she peers over her shoulder and Rick’s still watching her, his eyes soft and his smile just as wide and gentle as it was when she hurried down the aisle with their kids in tow, determined to rush through the formalities in order to get to the _corny_ part, the part where she fell into a rare fit of helpless sentiment and told him that he saved her, brought her back, and made her feel like a person again. That she’s with him and that she loves him – that she probably always loved him, even if she didn’t _like_ him at first.

“I prepared a best man’s speech for dinner”, Carl says after a while, “And it’s gonna be embarrassing.”

“For whom?”

“Both of you. But mostly for Dad.”

“That’s my boy.”

He snickers quietly and she joins him, tugging at the brim of his hat and pressing a kiss to his cheek as he snuggles against her chest with his arms locked tightly around her torso. She looks at Bo, the meadow, and the cat, revelling in the knowledge that, from now on, this is how it’s gonna be. A gentle breeze rings in a peaceful choir of seashell petals and laurel green leaves, and she knows that her odyssey has finally come to an end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that’s it.
> 
> Pardon the corniness. I never planned to end this fic with a wedding, but then it happened and I went with it. You can blame it on the Bill Withers song if you want :D
> 
> Love,  
> blueprintofyourpast
> 
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> 
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> 
> 1) Bands and musicians mentioned in this chapter: Charlie Feathers, The Ventures, Fats Domino, Elvis Costello, The Police, Chuck Berry, Patti Smith, The Clash, King Crimson, and, of course, Bill Withers.
> 
> 2) Woodbridge is a town in Virginia.
> 
> 3) I had to include a Siddiq cameo because – unpopular opinion or not – he’s slowly becoming one of my favourite characters and I’m loving Avi Nash’s performance so far.


End file.
